Sunday, February 6, 2011

Indian Elephants








This project was inspired by the wonderful Ink Elephants at Fun Art 4 Kids and Deep Space Sparkle and Indian Elephants at Painted Paper. All my classes created multi-media Indian Elephants. We learned a few facts about these animals on the endangered species list who have been a common subject in Indian art for ages. They are a symbols of wealth and royalty. During the Elephant Festival in Jaipur rows of painted and decorated elephants parade up and down though the crowd.
To create their own Indian Elephant the children followed a lesson using a combination of circles and ovals to create the large volume of the animal combined with a contour drawing lesson to capture the details. Washable makers and water create the inky, watercolor effect. While drying a decorative border was created on a colored piece of construction paper. The children created a printed pattern using the backs of paint brushes and sometimes fingerprints. Scrapbook paper and markers were used to adorn their elephant.

10 comments:

  1. WOW! I love the burgundy one! Actually, I like them all but the pattern is beautiful! Thanks for sharing! :)

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  2. So funny… I will add you on my inspiration list. I am working on the same thing right now. I got the idea in my head a year ago after seeing fun art for kids post and it developed into the Indian theme for me as well. You know what they say, Great minds….

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  3. Art teachers think alike! I started my Elephant Festival project last week with second graders. I used foil papers and pattern papers too. We are going to add Indian Mehndi Motif designs with white oil pastel and Matalllic FX crayons and paint this week.

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  4. You continue to be such a great inspiration.
    Thanks so much. I too am doing a Elephant from India project next week with the kinders.
    thanks for giving me more cool ideas!!
    Tami at BluemoonPalette

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  5. I LOVE these! Kind of remind me of our panda collages:

    http://sgpart.blogspot.com/2011/02/panda-and-bamboo-multimedia-collages-by.html

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  6. I am giving you a stylish blogger award. I love your site! Great ideas for any classroom teacher!

    http://mrswheelerfirst.blogspot.com/2011/02/thanks-everyone.html


    Megan
    Mrs. Wheeler's First Grade Tidbits

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  7. Your nice comments are so appreciated! Thanks very much for the stylish blogger award Megan! I'll have fun passing it along to 5 others. :D

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  8. I LOVE these Elephants, they turned out beautiful! I am going to go get scrapbook paper today and put this in my lesson plans for next week too!! Thanks!

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  9. Hee hee...so cute! This is the next thing on my list for first grade! I will post our results as well! We will use wall paper books I believe. Funart4kids! Thanks for the link!

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